Traditional conservatives are looking to conserve existing power structures. They believe that those in power deserve to be in power, and those without power deserve to be without power, and they seek to keep it that way. In the American Revolution, conservatives were monarchists. In the Civil War, conservatives supported slavery. In the civil rights era, conservatives supported Jim Crow and opposed equal rights, etc, etc, etc. They’re always looking to maintain and strengthen existing power structures. (Regardless of how unjust those power structures may be.) But, again, modern ‘conservatives’ are straying more toward fascism, so that begins to break down. What they’re trying to ‘conserve’ now is an imagined golden era that never truly existed in the first place, where their in-group supposedly had even more power than they ever really did, and where out-groups didn’t even exist.